Greek refinery producer Helleniq Energy has issued a tender to sell four bitumen cargoes for December loading dates from its 146,500 b/d Aspropyrgos refinery.
The tender, in which Helleniq has offered 4,000t cargoes for 9-11, 13-15, 18-20 and 27-29 loading dates at Aspropyrgos, closed today and is expected to be awarded by close of business, market participants said.
Helleniq has this year exported 250,000t of bitumen cargoes from Aspropyrgos, its key bitumen-producing refinery, up sharply from last year's 157,000t total, according to Kpler data. Greek refinery suppliers have stepped up this year to boost flows into north African, Black Sea and other destinations as Spanish and Italian export availability has been tight.
Motor Oil Hellas (MOH) cargo exports have already reached 1.2mn t this year, rising to 139,000t so far in November, which is already the highest monthly volume this year, according to Kpler data. This year's total so far is up from 828,000t in the whole of 2024, which was well down from 1.2mn t in 2023, partly because of a fire in September last year that halted one of two crude distillation units (CDU) at MOH's 180,000 b/d refinery at Agioi Theodoroi, Corinth, for nearly a year. MOH was able to gradually replace much of the lost bitumen production with imports of mainly Iraqi straight-run fuel oil, while its bitumen production since the CDU's early August restart has surged, trading and supply firms said, with especially high volumes produced in October and November.
That is partly in response to tighter than anticipated regional supply, especially because of prolonged maintenance work at the 198,000 b/d Sonatrach refinery at Augusta, Sicily, where work had been due to run from late September until the end of October. The extended halt, now expected by some regional bitumen players to last until early December, has severely restricted bitumen cargo supply from the facility, especially to Algeria, the leading regional cargo importer.
Spanish export availability has been tightened mainly by strong domestic construction sector activity and demand for bitumen, and by more heavy residues from the country's refineries being fed into processing units such as cokers to maximise output of motor fuels, especially diesel.
Substantial volumes of competitively priced Greek trucked bitumen are also being shipped to the country's Balkan neighbours and into Romania to compensate for lack of production and supply from US sanctions-hit Lukoil and NIS refineries in Burgas, Bulgaria, and Pancevo, Serbia, respectively, as well as limited supply from Mol's 161,000 b/d Szhazhalombatta refinery in Hungary after one of its CDUs was hit by a fire last month.
The race to meet cargo and truck requirements across central Europe and the Mediterranean has helped — unusually at this late stage of the consuming season before its usual winter lull — to keep bitumen cargo differentials to Mediterranean high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) stable rather than falling into sharp fob discounts, as is usual for December-loading cargoes.
